The Secret of Marriage: Going for the Gold

The evening went off without a hitch. Although that, of course, is what started it all.

The occasion was a love fest, a pre-Valentine’s Day gathering of more than 300 couples, all of whom are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversaries this year. More than 30,000 years of marriage under one roof!

Lawry’s the Prime Rib in Beverly Hills, observing its own golden anniversary this year, located and invited the couples--mostly from Southern California--for a dinner tribute. All were married in 1938, all are near or in their 70s, or older.

Among them were a couple who had exchanged letters for three years before they ever met, and the wife still has her letters; another wife who still remembers the first meal she prepared for her husband--noodles, mostly uncooked; a couple whose marriage ceremony was performed by two rabbis, because the first was late and when the second one arrived, neither would leave.

It was a night for stories, many of them, some as rare as the prime rib. And all had thoughts on what love really is, and what is the secret of a marriage lasting half a century.

“The year was 1934, I was living in Brooklyn, and I had a high school friend I used to go roller skating with,” Harriet Korechoff of Studio City recalled. “One day when we were skating through the streets, Allie told me about a neighbor friend of his, Sid, who had just moved out to Los Angeles and who he thought would like to meet me.

“Allie wrote him a letter introducing me by mail, and Sid followed with a letter to me.”

Three years later, Harriet and Sid, a postal worker at a Hollywood post office, were still writing back and forth across the country, still never having set eyes on the other.

While on vacation in 1937, the new Californian took a train to Detroit, where he bought a new Chevy for $900, and drove it straight to Harriet’s house.

“I was about to be engaged, my boyfriend had even bought a ring,” she remembered. “But my father wasn’t happy with him. And when Sid showed up, my father invited him to stay at our house.”

The boyfriend had been meeting Harriet regularly on the subway train they both took to work in Manhattan. “One day I told him about Sid, and that I was probably going to marry him. My former friend started taking another train, and I didn’t see him again.”

Half a year later, Harriet took a train to Los Angeles, followed shortly afterward by her family, and on Aug. 13, she and Sid were married in the house of a rabbi.

“I still have all his letters, there were more than a hundred, and sometimes I take them out and reread them,” Harriet recalled. “He didn’t save mine, but he still remembers what was in them.”

For Harriet, now 69, the definition of love: “In addition to the physical part, it is concern and caring for each other.”

And the secret of having a marriage last 50 years: “Tolerance of each other, and understanding each one’s personality. Each has to accept the other person.”

Sid, now 73, defines love as “a total commitment to another individual.”

And his formula for a long-lasting union? “Tolerance, plus the ability to communicate. You have to work at that. Different words have different meanings to different people.”

Lester and Lorraine White of Beverlywood have laughed their way through the last 50 years.

“We were actually married twice,” Lester said. “We were both living in Manhattan, and we eloped to New Jersey. A friend of mine knew the mayor of Newark, who conducted the ceremony for Lorraine and me in the City Hall on March 30.

“Her folks had wanted a big wedding, so after they found out about what we had done, they arranged a big wedding at the Waldorf Astoria on April 24, and we both went through it all again. So this year is really our 100th anniversary.”

Lester went on to become a comedy writer for Bob Hope for more than 25 years, doing most of his TV shows and some of his movies.

“I’ve been a good audience,” said Lorraine, 68. “Lester would try out his jokes on me. All comedy writers do that. If you want to have a really laughing party, invite comedy writers over.”

Her husband quipped that, in any year, if he happened to forget the March anniversary, he could always alibi: “Honey, you know we always celebrate the second one.”

Lester, 77, couldn’t give an answer to what he thought love and romance are, but he did disclose his formula for making a marriage work:

“Be sensitive to the secret hopes and aspirations of your loved one. We made a commitment for 50 years, with 10-minute options all along the way.”

Lorraine’s interpretation of love and romance: “It’s a lot of caring . . . you try not to hurt the other person’s feeling.”

As for the longevity of the couple’s relationship, she wisecracked: “My husband can’t throw anything away, even a piece of paper, so I never worried about his discarding me.”

In the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles, twin sisters are marking their half a century with their spouses.

Sid Campbell recalled the night he went alone to a dance in New Orleans. A friend of his, Arthur Marsalis, had escorted two women--one of whom, Kathryn , he was dating seriously. The other was her identical twin sister, Carolyn. Campbell’s eyes quickly lit on her.

Unnoticed by Campbell, however, the twins went to the ladies room. Kathryn emerged first and Campbell, confused, asked his friend’s sweetheart to dance.

Everything got happily squared away, and as Ella Fitzgerald sang, Carolyn and Sid had their first dance together. They were married that Aug. 3, and many fox trots have followed since then.

Kathryn and Arthur Marsalis were wed later in 1938, on Dec. 2. “We married secretly,” Kathryn said. “We went to the home of a minister in New Orleans.

“It was six months before we announced it to anyone. I even continued living with my sister, and he lived with his mother. Neither my husband nor I had wanted a large wedding.”

Six months later, she said, each of the spouse’s families was brought together and was told separately, with approval all around.

Their definitions of love:

Carolyn, 74,: “Being together, sharing and considering each other’s feelings.”

Sid, 78: “Caring and being attentive to each other.”

Kathryn, 74: “Love is a deep feeling one person has for another, a deep sense of loyalty.”

Arthur, 82: “I believe in love at first sight. It was that way for me, and our first date was at an ice cream parlor.”

And their secrets of marital success:

Sid: “We obviously have something in common, but I really don’t know what it is. Whatever it is has worked.”

Carolyn: “It is as simple as two people just knowing each other’s thoughts and attitudes.

Kathryn: “A sense of responsibility for the commitment you have made to each other.”

Arthur: “Each person has to give a little and take a little.”

Despite the years, the memory of the start of their marriage is understandably still vivid in the minds of Hans and Ellen Goldsmith of Westminster.

“We are both Jewish, and we were married March 24, 1938, in a Germany that was under Nazi rule,” Hans recalled. “In Frankfurt, such a ceremony could only be done for couples such as us on Thursdays at the City Hall.”

And seven months after that wedding, the husband was hustled off to a concentration camp, his bride left alone at home.

“But after 5 1/2 weeks, I was released,” Hans said. “The reason was that my company had requested my release. I worked in a wholesale jewelry company, and Nazi Germany relied on such exports as jewelry to build up their war machine.

“I rejoined Ellen at home, but we left Germany the next year and fled to England, taking with us only suitcases with our clothes, leaving everything else behind.”

Ellen said they stayed in England for 13 months, working in a fish-and-chips shop, he frying the fish, she selling it.

Then came kindness from someone who had never ever met the couple.

“Hans’ sister was going to a teachers’ college in Greeley, Colo.,” Ellen said. “One of her professors signed an affidavit of support, which allowed us to come over.”

The couple settled in Denver, and for the next 36 1/2 years Hans was a traveling rep for a furniture company.

For their definition of love, both quoted the golden rule of doing unto others as you would have them do until you.

Hans, 74, joked when replying to what made 50 years of marriage possible, quoting the man who said it was the absence of divorce.

There was a pause. Then Ellen, 73, said: “We both went through hell together while we courted, and just after we married, and we stayed together.”

Added Hans: “We both lost a lot of relatives. I often say to my wife, it is by the grace of God that we are still walking together.”

The guests at the dinner entered the restaurant past a 1938 Jeep parked outside. Some had signed up for the get-together during a previous visit to the restaurant, some heard of it by word-of-mouth, others were signed up by their children or other relatives.

Among them all, the couples had 415 children, 790 grandchildren and 114 great-grandchildren.

It was a tie between two months as to which was the most popular for marrying--June and September, each with 31 weddings. Five of the couples started 1938 right by tying the knot on New Year’s Day.

“My parents were married 51 years before my mother died,” Richard N. Frank, president and chief executive officer of Lawry’s Restaurants Inc., said in welcoming his guests. “I once said to my father: ‘How lucky both of you are to be so happily married.’ He replied: ‘Luck has nothing to do with it. It takes hard work to make a relationship happy. You have to water the plant every day to make it grow.’ ”

Helga and Harold Ball of Studio City helped Frank slice an anniversary cake. Helga, 71, and Harold, 74, first dated at a ballroom dance in Redondo Beach. Wisdom from the wife: “Our rule has always been never to go to bed on a fight.”

The marriage of Betty and Harry Feinstein of Agoura Hills got off to a happy, though hectic, start.

The ceremony on June 12 was performed by two clergymen.

“It was a hot Sunday afternoon in Chicago, we had about 80 guests inside a house with no air conditioning, and an hour after we were supposed to start, the rabbi still hadn’t arrived,” Betty said.

Harry recalled that everybody was standing around sweating, wanting to know what was going on, so his father ran to the nearest synagogue, got the home address of that rabbi, ran to his house and asked him to come over and officiate at the wedding.

“The second one obliged, but no sooner had he walked inside our door, than the original rabbi showed up,” Betty said. “He explained that he had been delayed at another wedding.

“We first asked one to leave, then we asked the other, but neither would budge. They both wanted to officiate.”

And that is what happened. One did the ceremony in English, the other followed in Hebrew.

“Afterward,” Betty said, “everybody kidded that since the knot had been tied twice, there could be no backing out now.”

There certainly wasn’t. And for 30 years the couple ran two resorts on Lake Michigan.

Their thoughts on romance and what it takes to keep a marriage together 50 years:

Betty, 67, on love: “It is trust and understanding--and knowing when to keep your mouth shut.”

On longevity: “It went so fast. I guess it helps if both people keep busy.”

Harry, 70, on love: “It is being able, when you have an argument, to forget about it after 10 minutes.”

And on longevity: “The times when I went out and sometimes forgot to come home for awhile, she overlooked it.”

If ever any couple had reason to remember how it all began half a century ago, it was Mildred and Zola Schneider of Brentwood.

After their wedding at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Feb. 6, they were driving back to Los Angeles after a San Francisco honeymoon when they checked into a hotel south of Salinas for the night. But deciding they didn’t like the room, they checked out and drove on to seek other quarters.

It was raining, they recalled, as their new Pontiac, a wedding present, began to cross the Soledad Bridge, a 1,500-foot span across the Salinas River.

“Suddenly, as I was on the bridge, it went up and then down,” Zola said. “I heard my wife screaming.”

The bridge was collapsing. “I was screaming for him to stop,” Mildred said, “and it seemed an eternity before he did.”

According to news accounts at the time, their car skidded to a stop just four feet from the brink, before they would have plunged to an almost certain death in the floodwaters below.

“There were two vehicles behind us,” Mildred said. “Everybody got out and fled on foot. I said to myself that there was no way I would let my husband go and get our car, but one of the other people voluntarily went out and drove it back. We never even found out his name.

“The two of us drove to another hotel with the same type of room we hadn’t liked before, but now it looked just beautiful.”

Zola said that up until then he had acted cool, “but once I got in the bed, I couldn’t fall asleep.”

Quite a beginning for a couple whose first meeting had been nothing out of the ordinary, just a blind date for a game of--would you believe it--bridge.

The couple (ages not given) had successful careers in the insurance business, and now have their answers to the two key questions:

Mildred on love: “I think each person has to be considerate of the other.”

And on the formula for staying married so long: “Care about one another. And if you have an argument, make up immediately.”

Zola on love: “Give consideration to the other person.”

And on marriage longevity: “Don’t stretch your arguments. Spill it out, get it over with, and make up.”

Irene and Eddie Reiss of Camarillo proved that, to make a marriage work, it pays to use your noodle.

They were married in a Brooklyn restaurant on Feb. 27, and for their honeymoon, Eddie, who was a bread truck driver, took the next day off.

“We shopped for groceries, we took in a movie, and then we went back to our apartment for the first meal she would be preparing for me,” Eddie said.

“I had asked him what he liked,” Irene said, “and he replied that he liked noodles. I bought some, but I had never cooked any before.”

She proceeded to put a pound of raw noddles into a small saucepan. “Everything began boiling over,” she said. “There were noodles on the stove, noodles on the floor, and even some remained in the pan--half raw.

“I wanted to throw the whole mess out, but he insisted that I serve it, and with each bite he kept saying how delicious it tasted.”

Eddie had a good reason: “I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”

To this day, Irene, 71, is still impressed: “How could you not stay with a man like that 50 years?”

Irene’s definition of love: “It is built on compassion for each other, and love for your family.”

And on marriage longevity: “Being able to talk to each other, and not keeping secrets from one another.”

Eddie, 73, on love: “Caring a great deal.”

And he had the last word on marriage longevity: “We seem to need each other.”